For many years, Barry Maguire drove a bus on the beautiful route between Keswick and Lancaster. “One day in 1976, I was driving a heavily loaded coach out of Kendal,” Barry explains. “As we struggled up to Windermere, I noticed an elderly lady pushing her way to the front. She asked me to drop her off at the ‘whale’s jaw bones’, which seemed an odd request.
“I pulled in beside a pair of large bones that formed an arch over a farm gate. I joked, ‘It must have been a high tide when they arrived here.’ The lady replied, ‘The whale was fine when he arrived, but that’s what happens when you’re waiting for buses.’
“Her remark reminded me of a tale told years earlier by my great grandfather, Captain Charles Edward Jones. He was a master mariner and a great storyteller.”
Charles was born at Connah’s Quay in Flintshire, North-East Wales, in 1875. His father owned a schooner that carried bulk cargo out of Porthmadog, Gwynedd.
Charles was gifted academically, and his teachers suggested that he attend university. He had different ideas, however, and at the age of 12 stowed away on his father’s ship to begin a seafaring career.
He gained his Coastal Masters Certificate aged 21, and a year later had his own command. It was a remarkable achievement for a young man.
“Charles had many tales to tell of maritime life, including an occasion when he towed a stricken vessel off Goodwin Sands in Kent, saving the crew’s lives.”
In 1906, Charles married Bertha Brown and they settled in the coastal village of Heysham near Morecambe. Charles operated a suction dredger in the bay named the Laga, which drew sediment from the seabed to keep the harbour safe for shipping.
On the night of 16 March 1907, a storm was brewing. Tides 30 feet high were predicted, and an 80 mph south-westerly gale was blowing. A fortnight of rain had raised the levels of the local rivers, and the tide was battling against the floodwater to come in.
“As night fell the tide rushed in like a tsunami. It must have been a very anxious time for Charles, especially because Bertha was in labour with their first child. There was a real risk of the Laga filling with water and sinking.
“He did all that he could to ensure his ship’s safety, doubling up mooring lines and leaving the engine room manned with the mate and two sailors.”
Charles’ vivid account of the storm included a tale of seawater rushing into the local isolation hospital and carrying away two of the patients.
Despite the maelstrom, Charles and Bertha’s eldest child Ethel was born safe and well at home, and the Laga survived the chaos. Barry’s grandmother Dorothy was born a year later.
As the water receded, the body of a sperm whale was discovered beached by the flood. Thousands of people came to view it.
“The decomposing whale began to stink, so the carcass was set ablaze in a local field. The farmer rescued the jawbones and put them over his gate. It’s a massive coincidence that they later became a bus stop on my route.
“Charles passed away when he was 92,” Barry concludes. “He was a remarkable man – strict but endlessly patient, and he used to enthral us with his stories.”